John Greg wrote:JacquesCuze, here are some questions for you, in regards your comment about contacting PeeZus's employers:
1. What direct and provable connection and relevance is there between PeeZus's online rantings and his career?
2. What is your direct connection with his employer that makes it relevant and/or applicable for you to make that contact?
3. What student/teacher relationship do you have with PeeZus that makes that contact relevant and/or applicable?
As I said, I wouldn't do it. And I think it would be mostly counterproductive.
What I also said was that it someone could make the case for it, I wouldn't think it was particularly horrible.
I think that if 1) can be met, that 2 & 3 are irrelevant. I write to prosecutors and their employers in far away states many times to protest what I believe are horrible prosecutions, yet prosecutions that could never affect me because they are in far away states. Earlier today I tweeted to the ASU President over his ridiculous tweets concerning #ItsOnUs and in the past about his police accepting fully automatic weapons to use. I have no connection whatsoever to ASU, though it is possible my kids may one day go there.
Re: What direct and provable connection and relevance is there between PeeZus's online rantings and his career?
In no particular order:
+ Since U Morris IS touting PZ's tweets as representing the good in U Morris as science communicators, it is completely reasonable to point out his tweets and blog posts contain a lot of reprehensible behavior that then also must reflect on U Morris.
+ I question whether a professor who behaves, communicates, and reasons as PZ does at his blog, and with his publication record, is truly the best professor available to not only teach students biology, but to guide their research, and guide their careers to graduate school and beyond. Hell, how many students does he fail to place in graduate school since he has burned so many bridges? Beats me, but I would look at a PZ reference with jaundiced eyes.
+ Since a huge part of science and STEM is teaching ethical behaviors and a proper social responsibility (I went to a college and majored in physics where former Manhattan Project physicists talked about that constantly) it is of huge concern to the U Morris community and the scientific community that Myers is so free with accusing others of sexual assault, doxing others, and trying to alert their employers.
+ Since a huge part of science and STEM in 2014 is communicating on the Internet it is again of huge concern to the U Morris that by daily example Myers abuses people online, and teaches by example that public accusations of illegal, corrupt behavior with little to no evidence to support that is appropriate and ethical.
+ Since a huge part of science and STEM in 2014 is logical skeptical thought and experimentation it is again of huge concern to the U Morris and scientific community that by daily example Myers teaches his students to suspend that skepticism, to not be hyperskeptical, and to flame in the harshest and most personal ways people who disagree with him.
+ Were PZ to succeed in getting people fired by contacting their employers to complain about their behaviors, it is perfectly reasonable to alert his employer to how PZ's online behaviors are reflecting on U Morris.
+ It might even be unfair to the U Morris to tweet about PZ, blog about PZ, paper the campus about PZ, and have conference sessions regarding PZ and FTB and not alert his employer as to how he is using his time and how that reflects on the campus.
Here is what Popehat has written, and as my history here shows, I am no great fan of Popehat:
http://www.popehat.com/2013/09/10/speec ... sequences/
So unlike Popehat, I am against Internet bred viral campaigns to oust people from jobs. But as I also said, contacting an employer to alert them to speech is a speech activity. It's not the same as a campaign demanding someone be fired.
I agree with Popehat in that a criticism that the response is disproportionate is legitimate, but here, people wouldn't be calling Josh's employer to demand Josh be fired for being an Internet Jerk, it would be the notion that in general maybe his employer would like to know, and should know, what their professor is doing at the same time they are touting him as a great science communicator and teaching their students about the scientific method, mentoring them and guiding them to productive careers.